624 EXCAVATIONS IN AN ANCIENT 



present day, with tlie elongated but narrow form which he sup- 

 poses to have belonged to the * Belgae,' Retzius speaks first of ' the 

 common Celtic form,' and says it differs from the ' Belgic,' in being 

 less narrow and compressed. The Cimbric variety, he adds, which 

 is found in South Sweden and Denmark, is even somewhat broader 

 still ; is very like the Scandinavian Gothic form, and is of an elon- 

 gated oval shape, with a greatly developed occipital region. And 

 Retzius has, by the gift of a 'plaster cast of the cranium of an 

 ancient aboriginal of Scandinavia regarded as the Celt' to the 

 easily accessible and invaluable ethnological series in the London 

 College of Surgeons \ enabled us to understand most unambiguously 

 what was the type of skull to which he alluded. To this type, most 

 assuredly, the large majority of the adult Romano-British crania 

 found in this cemetery are referable. And I may here say that a 

 skull obtained by me, with many others, from a barrow at Dinning- 

 ton, near Rotherham, in South Yorkshire (Article xiii), of which casts 

 have been made and presented to various museums in this and 

 other countries by Dr. Thurnam, corresponds very closely with this 

 cast presented to the College of Surgeons by Professor Retzius, and 

 more closely still with some of the very fine skulls obtained by me 

 from Frilford. Professor Ecker, in writing of this cast 2, observes, 

 apparently without having Retzius' comparison above quoted of 

 such skulls to the Scandinavian Gothic type before his mind, that 

 it resembles the skulls he has described as ' Grave Row,' ' Reihen- 

 Graber ' skulls, and assigned to the ancient Germanic and modern 

 Swedish peoples. Very similar skulls, again, I have obtained from 

 Romano-British cemeteries of the later times of the Empire, as 

 testified to by archaeological evidence, at Long Wittenham, in 

 Berkshire, through the kindness of the Rev. J. C. Clutterbuck ; 

 from Helmingham, in SuflPolk, through the agency of the Rev. G. 

 Cardew, and from Towyn-y-Capel, Holyhead, by that of the Hon. 

 W. O. Stanley. The ancient British skull from a cist at Winter- 

 borne Monkton, North Wilts, figured by Dr. Thurnam, 'Crania 

 Britannica,' Plate 58, is closely similar in contour and proportions, 

 as taken by measurement, to the variety of which I am here treating. 



^ See 'Catalogue,' Osteological Series, ii. 880, Prep. 5709. 



* 'Archiv fiir Anthropologie,* i. 2, p. 283. As Professor Ecker considers his 

 * Reihengraberform ' to correspond with the ' Hohberg ' t\ pe of His and Eiitimeyer, it 

 would appear that he would consider this cast as belonging to that class, from which, 

 however, its cubic capacity differentiates it. 



